A Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) is generally a wireless network operated by recognized and authorized organizations called wireless service providers. A PLMN can use radio waves in licensed spectrum to create a telecommunication network for providing mobile telecommunications service to the public. A mobile service can provide continuous connectivity amongst mobile devices or between mobile devices to a fixed network.
PLMNs can use cellular telephony that is generally characterized by the use of radio cells that provide radio coverage for a geographic area, with multiple cells arranged to provide contiguous radio coverage over a larger area. Wired communication can be used in portions of a PLMN, such as between cells, access points, or gateways to create entry/exit points to the Internet. A typical PLMN can include an access network (AN) that is specific to wireless technologies and a core network (CN) that performs routing of mobile communication within the PLMN or from PLMN to extern packet data networks (PDN), e.g., the Internet.
Demand for mobile internet has seen steady growth. It is expected that worldwide demand for IP connectivity and transmission worldwide from mobile devices using wireless networks would be approximate 26,000 peta bytes per day. The current architecture of the PLMN core network, e.g., for Wi-Fi, GPRS, HRPD or WiMAX (CSN) may not be suitable to scale to such high data throughput required for mobile internet without extraordinarily high cost and complexity. In some situations, wireless communication service providers deploy smaller cells in dense areas in order to provide adequate coverage and capacity to the users. However, close proximity of small cells (e.g., Wi-Fi access points) can cause radio interference. Networks with automated management of radio interference for enhancing data throughput are sometimes referred to as self-optimizing networks (SON).